Mark Foley scandal
Newsweek's June 7, 2010, issue's Back Story listed Foley, among others, as a prominent conservative politician who had a record of anti-gay legislation and was later caught in a gay sex scandal.
[15][16] Foley was chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, which introduced legislation targeting sexual predators and created stricter guidelines for tracking them.
[20][21][22] ABC News reported on October 5 that in 2002, Foley e-mailed one page with an invitation to stay at the congressman's home in exchange for oral sex.
[18] Two Florida newspapers, the St. Petersburg Times and Miami Herald, and the Fox News Channel acquired copies of these e-mails in November 2005, but decided not to publish a story.
[35] The organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) said it received copies of the e-mails on July 21 and turned them over to the FBI that same day.
Mercieca hinted at an even more intimate event, which he claimed took place while he was under the influence of tranquilizers and alcohol, and which he could not clearly recollect, and that he taught Foley "some wrong things" related to sex, which he did not specify.
The Archdiocese of Miami issued a statement apologizing to Foley for "the hurt he experienced" from the priest's "morally reprehensible" actions, and suspended Mercieca's faculties.
"[63] In the second allegation, a page told the FBI and House Clerk's office that he was "uncomfortable with a particular social encounter" including physical contact that occurred in 2001 when he and Kolbe were alone.
"[10] Several current and former congressional employees recalled Foley approaching young male pages at parties, going back many years, and say that warnings about him were commonly passed around.
However, on October 6 a second congressional staffer corroborated Fordham's version of the events, claiming that in 2003 a meeting took place between Palmer and Foley, specifically to discuss complaints about his behavior towards pages.
[71] Trandahl, testifying to a closed session of the House Ethics Committee, reportedly also confirmed that Hastert's office was notified of Foley's behavior in 2003.
He stated that he regularly updated Hastert's counsel and floor manager, Ted Van Der Meid, about a "problem group of members and staff who spent too much time socializing with pages outside of official duties."
[83][84] Representative Rodney Alexander (R-LA) stated that he learned of the five initial e-mails from Foley to the 16-year-old page from Louisiana in the fall of 2005, after a news reporter brought the matter to his attention.
According to The Washington Post, "Republican insiders said Reynolds spoke out because he was angry that Hastert appeared willing to let him take the blame for the party leadership's silence."
[94] The other two representatives on the board, Dale Kildee (D-MI) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) did not find out about them until the scandal broke in October 2006.
Hastert is unusually close to his top staffers; he lives with Palmer and Stokke, who have worked for him for decades, and they commute back to Illinois together on weekends.
According to The Washington Post, "Republican insiders said Reynolds spoke out because he was angry that Hastert appeared willing to let him take the blame for the party leadership's silence.
According to conservative columnist Robert Novak, Reynolds convinced a reluctant Foley to run for re-election even after finding out about his questionable e-mails.
[121] Shimkus said "that in late-2005 he learned – through information passed along by Alexander's office – about an e-mail exchange in which Foley asked about the youngster's well-being after Hurricane Katrina and requested a photograph.
[125] The House subcommittee was composed of Representatives Doc Hastings (R-WA), Howard Berman (D-CA), Judy Biggert (R-IL), and Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH).
[128] On October 13, 2006, a Justice Department spokesman confirmed that they had opened a preliminary investigation of the official rafting trip taken in 1996 by Kolbe with two 17 year-old former pages.
[8] On October 1, 2006 in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Hastert requested an investigation into Foley's actions, specifically into the explicit IMs that had recently surfaced.
On September 29, 2006, Rep. Pelosi (D-CA) criticized Republican leaders, who, she said, "have known of the egregious behavior of Congressman Mark Foley, yet were prepared to adjourn [Congress] tonight without an Ethics Committee investigation."
[144] On October 6, political scientist and analyst Stuart Rothenberg wrote that the scandal may have helped to "set the stage for a blowout of cosmic proportions next month" in the November elections.
[citation needed] Reynolds, the head of the NRCC, who knew of some Foley e-mails before the scandal became public, released an ad apologizing to his constituents.
Shortly before the scandal broke, a SurveyUSA poll found Reynolds' Democratic challenger Jack Davis unexpectedly trailing by only two percentage points (43%-45%),[151] a statistical tie.
Two more Representatives, Jon Porter (R-NV) and Kay Granger (R-TX) also supported LaHood's recommendation to suspend the page program until an outside team could evaluate its security protocol.
[15][16] On October 19, anonymous law enforcement sources said that FBI interviews with at least 40 former pages involved in the case had not found evidence of any sex crimes by Mark Foley.
[157] Legislation that Mark Foley helped enact, the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, covers certain Internet communications with minors under 18.
In the District of Columbia, the law states that "anyone who purchases or furnishes alcohol to a [person below the drinking age] faces a fine of up to $1,000 and/or imprisonment for up to 180 days.
